May 2007

Last week, a Wall Street Journal editorial set out to debunk a certain “myth that has become a key talking point among restrictionists on the right,” namely, that low-skilled immigrant households impose a huge net-cost on American taxpayers. The major study on this issue is by the Heritage Foundation’s Robert Rector, and it is that study that the editorial purports to refute.

The editorial, however, failed in its aim. In fact, the editorial willfully ignored differences among different immigrant populations and displayed little understanding of the administration of government benefits and services. The Wall Street Journal’s analysis was so unresponsive to Rector’s report that it would seem the editorial’s author was simply unfamiliar with Rector’s detailed findings.

The editorial noted that Rector’s study, “The Fiscal Cost of Low-Skill Immigrants to the U.S. Taxpayer,” found that “`the average lifetime costs to the taxpayer will be $1.1 million’ for each low-skilled immigrant household.” Not to bicker over details, but Rector’s paper actually puts the lifetime cost per low-skilled household at “nearly $1.2 million.” That figure is based on the calculation that, in fiscal year 2004, low-skilled immigrant households received on average $30,160 in benefits and services (including means-tested aid, education, and population-based services like police and fire protection) and paid only $10,573 in taxes (including property and excise taxes and even lottery-ticket purchases). So the fiscal “deficit” of each low-skilled household is $19,588. About 60 percent of adult illegal immigrants lack a high-school degree and so are considered “low-skilled” in Rector’s analysis.

The editorial attempts to reveal “one basic flaw” of Rector’s study, not by examining his analysis of the extensive government data that support his conclusions, but rather by making reference to research from the Immigration Policy Center, the policy arm of the trade association of immigration lawyers.

It is true that Rector does not account for certain contingencies entertained in the IPC’s research – for instance, the fact that among the population of high-school dropouts in American are included self-made billionaires Ray Kroc and Dave Thomas (the founders of McDonald’s and Wendy’s), and that such persons just might be lurking among the 4.5 million low-skilled immigrant households.

Yet it is not for this that the Wall Street Journal refers to the IPC research. Rather, it is because the IPC points out, rightly, that recent immigrants are not eligible for many federal welfare benefits. Of course, Rector’s report acknowledges as much, which the writer of the editorial would have noticed if he had made it through page 9 of Rector’s 70-page report.

Rector details the government benefits typically received by the pertinent households, fully accounting for the welfare ineligibility of recent immigrants – the result, we might add, of a provision in the 1996 welfare reform legislation that Rector is largely responsible for. As Rector explains, “Most of the tax and benefits estimates in this paper are unaffected by a low-skill immigrant household’s legal status. . . this analysis adjusts for the lower use of government and benefits by illegal [and legal] immigrants.”

The Wall Street Journal apparently doesn’t understand that, while recent immigrants are ineligible for certain welfare benefits, their citizen children qualify for means-tested government aid. And Rector’s calculations rely on the receipt of government benefits these households self-report to the Census Bureau.

After failing to make a careful accounting of benefits received and taxes paid by low-skilled immigrant households, the editorial then ignores the specific characteristics of these households by citing the incomes and contributions of immigrants in general, including college graduates. The editorial irrelevantly states that “immigrants who have just arrived have median household earnings of $31,930.” Workers in the low-skilled households – i.e., the subject of the report ostensibly being debunked – have annual incomes of $18,490.

Robert Rector’s careful analysis demonstrates that low-skilled immigrant households consume far more in government benefits than they pay in taxes. The Wall Street Journal’s careless editorial demonstrates that his critics are unable to credibly disagree

One of the achievements touted by Republican negotiators of the odious Senate amnesty bill was the inclusion of a program to import up to 600,000 additional foreign workers a year, with no path to citizenship. Sen. Jon Kyl marked it as a win that Ted Kennedy had acceded to the principle that “temporary means temporary.”

We can’t survive too many more wins like that. Guestworker programs suffer from two problems – they never work, and their very premise is morally wrong. As to the first, economist Philip Martin, one of the world’s top scholars in this field, draws these three lessons from our experience with guestworker programs:

1. “There is nothing more permanent than temporary workers.”
2. “The availability of foreign workers distorts the economy.”
3. “Employers invest in lobbying to maintain the program, not in labor-saving or back-saving alternatives.”

The first point is especially pertinent. Didn’t it occur to anyone why Ted Kennedy was agreeing to something that the labor movement has been fighting against since it won passage of the Alien Contract Labor Act in 1885? He knows perfectly well that guestworker programs always lead to increased immigration, both from “temporary” workers who don’t leave and from parallel flows of legal and illegal immigration sparked by the program. Our most recent experience was the “Bracero” program, which imported Mexican farm workers until it was abolished in 1964. During the 22 years the program lasted, annual Mexican immigration – permanent immigration, leading to citizenship – grew from little more than 2,000 to as high as 61,000, for total permanent settlement of more than a half-million Mexicans. This compares with a total of only a million or so Mexican men who actually took part in the Bracero program. During that same period, arrests of Mexican illegal aliens totaled 5.3 million, more than the 4.6 million admissions of guestworkers (some representing the same men multiple times).

Germany had the same experience with its postwar “gastarbeiter” program for Turkish and other workers. When it was discontinued after the 1973 oil embargo, the government expected the “temporary” workers would complete their contracts and go home, because of the supposedly “circular” movement of such people, going back and forth between Germany and Turkey (the same story that today’s guestworker boosters are telling about Mexicans). Instead, the “temporary” workers not only stayed, they brought their families, too, causing Germany’s foreign population to nearly double over the next 25 years.

Sen. Kennedy knows this full well – one more indication that Ted Kennedy negotiating with Republicans over immigration is like Gary Kasparov playing an elementary-school chess team. In fact, a congressional source tells me that last year Rep. Howard Berman (career grade of F from Americans for Better Immigration) was privately trying to persuade skeptical Democrats to agree to a guestworker program with the promise that, after all, they’d never really have to go back.

But what if we lived in some alternate universe where “temporary” really did mean temporary? Where the Senate bill’s promise of a “two years here, one year home” foreign-worker program was something other than a trick? We would still be wise to answer, “get thee behind me, Satan.”

The temptation to delegate certain categories of work to menials is as old as civilization. It was the basis of the Hindu caste system, the Spartan economy, antebellum southern society, and daily life today in the oil states of the Persian Gulf. It is based on the premise that other men are labor inputs destined for those jobs that Americans (or Brahmans or Spartans or white southerners or Saudis) won’t do. It is subversive of republican virtue, moving us back toward the kind of master-servant society America was founded to transcend.

Unfortunately, most of the opposition to guestworker programs has come from the Left. The AFL-CIO has fought the guestworker provisions of the bill (though they’re fine with amnesty and increased permanent immigration), most senators voting to kill the guestworker provisions were Democrats, and the Southern Poverty Law Center, of all places, recently published a report on the exploitative nature of existing guestworker programs (they found, for instance, that guestworkers yearned to be illegal aliens, since they could make a lot more money that way).

Of course, there are conservatives who get all this. Phyllis Schlafly has written that “Inviting foreigners to come to America as guest workers is equivalent to sending the message: You people are only fit to do menial jobs that Americans think they are too good to do,” and has approvingly cited Theodore Roosevelt’s warning that “Never under any condition should this nation look at an immigrant as primarily a labor unit.” Likewise, Senators Vitter and Coburn voted last week to kill the guestworker provisions of the Senate bill.

But they were the only Republicans voting to kill the program, demonstrating that too many Republicans have bowed to the demands of cheap-labor employers (or been taken in by their false arguments about the “need” for such labor) and are prepared to fight to retain this immoral program. Commerce Secretary Carlos Gutierrez said recently that the Bush administration would fight to overturn a Senate amendment that cut the size of the program to “only” 200,000 foreign workers per year. And Sen. Kyl said the whole deal would be off if he couldn’t add back an escalator clause that would increase the number of visas if businesses wanted more than the available 200,000 captive foreign workers.

When a contemptible racket like the Southern Poverty Law Center has a better understanding of a public-policy issue than Republican senators, we’re in trouble. The Left might actually end up saving Republicans from themselves, especially if the guestworker programs provide enough Democratic senators a liberal rationale to oppose the bill. We’d better hope so.

We were told today that if you oppose the Senate immigration bill, “you don’t want to do what’s right for America”. Well, then, it appears that most Americans of most demographic groups “don’t want to do what’s right for America”. In an interesting slip of the tongue, President Bush admitted that “most Americans” are concerned first with border security, in his speech today on the Senate immigration bill, not that he let that fact interfere with his relentless pushing of this fantasy of “comprehensive” reform:

“the fundamental question is, will elected officials have the courage necessary to put a comprehensive immigration plan in place that makes it more likely we can enforce our border and, at the same time, uphold the great traditions of – immigrant traditions of the United States of America.

we’re expanding the number of Border Patrol agents from about 9,000 to 13,000, and by the end of – we have expanded it – and by the end of 2008, we’re going to have 18,000 agents. We will have more than doubled the Border Patrol in a relatively quick period of time.In this immigration debate, oftentimes people say, well, they’re not doing anything to protect the border. Well, that’s not – those folks just simply don’t know what’s going on. You do. Men and women who wear the uniform understand what’s going on. There’s a focused, concerted effort to enforce our border.Arrests have gone down by 27 percent over the past year on the southern border. That’s a sign of progress.

Most Americans – many Americans say their primary concern is border security and ensuring that those who violate our laws face consequences. That’s what you’re hearing out there when you’re listening to the debate.

Others say their chief concern is keeping this economy strong. There’s a – a lot of employers need a legal way to fill jobs that Americans simply aren’t doing.I remember the peach grower, Saxby, that you sent over to the White House. He’s there saying to me, you’ve got to understand something, Mr. President, my business won’t go forward unless I have some of these good people that are willing to work long hours in my peach orchard helping me harvest the crop. So a lot of people in this debate are concerned about getting a bill in place that will help keep the economy growing. Others say their main concern is to bring hardworking, decent people out of the shadows of our society.

A lot of Americans are skeptical about immigration reform primarily because they don’t think the government can fix the problems. And my answer to the skeptics is, give us a chance to fix the problems in a comprehensive way that enforces our border and treats people with decency and respect.Amnesty.many of the authors of this bill oppose it. This bill is not an amnesty bill. If you want to scare the American people, what you say is, the bill is an amnesty bill. It’s not an amnesty bill. That’s empty political rhetoric, trying to frighten our fellow citizens.

Those determined to find fault with this bill will always be able to look at a narrow slice of it and find something they don’t like. If you want to kill the bill, if you don’t want to do what’s right for America, you can pick one little aspect out of it, you can use it to frighten people.

We observe, among other things, that the Bush administration has notably failed to follow through on its previous commitments to expand border enforcement personnal. Pardon our skepticism and not wanting to be fooled twice.

UPDATE

When we look at the convoluted and soon to be weakened implementation plan, we can only think that the author of the President’s speech was naive or stupid or perhaps a college professor. The real world does not work this way, as we have explained at some length. Here’s the administration’s take:

Under the bill, those who want to stay in our country who have been here can apply for a Z visa. At some point in time, those who are coming to work will get temporary work visas. Those who have been here already can apply for a Z visa. To receive the visa, illegal workers must admit they violated the law and pay a meaningful penalty, pass a strict background check, hold a job, maintain a clean record, and eventually earn English – learn English.

The hurdles to citizenship are going to be even higher. In other words, if somebody says, fine, I’ll take my Z visa, I’m out of the shadows now, I’ve got an opportunity to not hide in America. I’ll continue doing the work I’m doing, I’m going to keep my record clean. I’ll pay the penalties necessary so I can stay here – that’s what it says – but if you want to be a citizen, there’s more hurdles. It says, the Z visa worker would first have to pay an additional fine. In other words, you have broken the law and there’s a consequence for breaking the law. That’s what the bill says.

Secondly, you’ve got to return home to file an application for your green card. If you want to be a citizen, you pay a fine, you touch base home to apply for a green card, and then you take your place behind those who have played by the rules and have been waiting in line, patiently, to become a citizen.

As Hugh Hewitt has ably demonstrated, no illegal immigrant is going anywhere after the bill is signed. And the notion that immigrants will leave the country to get back in and get in line is just cockamamie. We quote the NYT’s editorial today on the Senate bill’s “cruel path” to citizenship: “that path is strewn with cruel conditions, including a fine – $5,000 – that’s too steep and hurdles that are needlessly high, including a `touchback’ requirement for immigrants to make pilgrimages to their home countries to cleanse themselves of illegality.” How long do you think the $5000 fee and the “touchback” provisions will survive after a bill is signed? We prefer our amnesty bills honest at least.

If a compromise bill on immigration passes, it “could be a disaster for the Republican Party,” U.S. Sen. Jim DeMint said. DeMint is leading Republican efforts in the Senate against the legislation that his South Carolina colleague U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham helped write. “It’s definitely been a strain at this point — strain in relationships,” DeMint said Tuesday in a phone interview after meeting with Spartanburg-area residents to talk about the legislation.

But passing a bill that doesn’t give people confidence in the country’s immigration laws will help unite Democrats, DeMint said. “The Republicans are not going to get any gains from this,” he said. “Politically, it could be a disaster for the Republican Party.”

Graham’s spokesman said he was not available to talk to a reporter. But Furman University political scientist Danielle Vinson said with President Bush and Graham and other Republican senators pushing to get the bill through the Senate, it doesn’t make sense that Democrats would get all the credit.

Also on Tuesday, Gov. Mark Sanford — a longtime Graham ally — called on South Carolina legislators to act quickly on statewide legislation as he sidestepped questions about the federal illegal immigration proposal. The state proposal would make it a felony to harbor or transport illegal immigrants and bars government contractors from hiring illegal immigrants. It also forces businesses to pay state payroll taxes on illegal immigrants. There’s not much time for the proposal to pass, though. South Carolina lawmakers are scheduled to adjourn next week.

The Graham-DeMint differences on the immigration bill played out two weeks ago at the state GOP convention. when Republicans booed and shouted “No” at Graham’s explanations of the bill. But the crowd cheered DeMint, who said he’d work to defeat it if it appears to give illegal immigrants amnesty. By the end of the day, the state GOP had adopted a resolution saying it “adamantly opposes blanket amnesty for anyone who has not gone through the appropriate legal channels to enter our country.”

After Tuesday’s news conference, Sanford said he’ll leave it up to Graham and DeMint to mend their differences. “The nature of any political battle is it’s there for a day and gone the next day, so I’m sure they’ll do just fine,” he said.

Meanwhile, Democrats are enjoying the rare split within the GOP, which controls the state House, state Senate and eight of nine statewide offices. “It gives me no greater pleasure than to watch them fight each other over whose idea is worse,” said state Rep. Todd Rutherford, D-Columbia.

It truly is absurd that unskilled people can flock in while the highly skilled cannot

The US high-tech industry has opposed the immigration Bill being debated in the Senate aimed at dealing with an estimated 12 million illegal immigrants, saying the measures as currently drafted would harm the American technology industry.

The Information Technology Association of America (ITAA), a lobbying group representing high-tech companies, says the Bill won’t do enough to compensate for a shortage of skilled workers and will make it more difficult to hire qualified people from overseas.

In a letter to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, ITAA President and CEO, Phillip J Bond, said America’s economy is strong and vibrant, but the country’s future competitiveness rests on the ability of firms to recruit globally.

“As you know, the H-1B cap for fiscal year 2008 was reached in April, shutting out US employers from recruiting highly skilled foreign nationals, who are graduating from US institutions with degrees in computer science, engineering, mathematics and other scientific and technical fields,” Bond said.

He added that vacancies were going unfilled and highly valued workers are forced to leave the country.

Operation Wetback was a 1954 project of the United States Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) to remove about 1.2 million illegal immigrants from the southwestern United States, with a focus on Mexican nationals.

Burgeoning numbers of illegal aliens prompted President Dwight D. Eisenhower to appoint his longtime friend, General Joseph Swing, as INS Commissioner. According to Attorney General Herbert Brownell Jr., Eisenhower had a sense of urgency about illegal immigration immediately upon taking office. In a letter to Sen. William Fulbright, Eisenhower quoted a report in The New York Times that said: “The rise in illegal border-crossing by Mexican ‘wetbacks’ to a current rate of more than 1,000,000 cases a year has been accompanied by a curious relaxation in ethical standards extending all the way from the farmer-exploiters of this contraband labor to the highest levels of the Federal Government.”

Eisenhower became increasingly concerned that profits from illegal labor led to corruption. An on-and-off guest-worker program for Mexicans was operating at the time, and farmers and ranchers in the Southwest were becoming dependent on additional low-cost labor. The operation was modeled after the deportation program that invited American citizens of Mexican ancestry to go back to Mexico during the Great Depression because of the bad economy north of the border. See Mexican Repatriation.

The operation began in California and Arizona and coordinated 1,075 Border Patrol agents along with state and local police agencies to mount an aggressive crackdown, going as far as police sweeps of Mexican-American neighborhoods and random stops and ID checks of “Mexican-looking” people in a region with many Native Americans and native Hispanics[citation needed]. Some 750 agents targeted agricultural areas with a goal of 1000 apprehensions a day. By the end of July, over 50,000 aliens were caught in the two states. Around 488,000 people fled the country for fear of being apprehended. By September, 80,000 had been taken into custody in Texas, and the INS estimates that 500,000-700,000 illegals had left Texas voluntarily. To discourage re-entry, buses and trains took many illegals deep within Mexico before being set free. Tens of thousands more were put aboard two hired ships, the Emancipation and the Mercurio. The ships ferried the aliens from Port Isabel, Texas, to Veracruz, Mexico, more than 500 miles (900 kilometers) south.

Operation Wetback deported approximately 80,000 Mexican nationals in the space of almost a year, although local INS officials claimed that an additional 500,000-700,000 had fled to Mexico before the campaign began. The INS estimates rested on the claim that most undocumented people, fearing apprehension by the government, had voluntarily repatriated themselves before and during the operation.

Statement of T. Willard Fair, President and CEO, Urban League of Greater Miami; Center for Immigration Studies Board Member
Before the Subcommittee on Immigration, Citizenship, Refugees, Border Security, and International Law, Committee on the Judiciary, U.S. House of Representatives, May 9, 2007

EXCERPT: “Of course, none of that means that individual immigrants — or particular immigrant groups — can be blamed for the difficulties facing black men. Being pro-Me should never make me anti-You. Nor can we use immigration as a crutch, blaming it for all our problems. The reality is that less-educated black men in America today have a variety of problems — high rates of crime and drug use, for example, and poor performance at work and school — that are caused by factors unrelated to level of immigration.

“But if cutting immigration and enforcing the law wouldn’t be a cure-all, it sure would make my job easier. Take employment — immigration isn’t the whole reason for the drop in employment of black men; it’s not even half the reason. But it is the largest single reason, and it’s something we can fix relatively easily.”

EXCERPT: “Technology sector employers, who represent the largest share of H-1B visa users, tell the public that the H-1B program is vital to their ability to find the highly skilled workers they need. Yet Department of Labor data tell a different story. Previous studies have found that the H-1B program is primarily used to import low-wage workers. This report examines the most recently available wage data on the H-1B program and finds that the trend of low prevailing wage claims and low wages continues. In addition, while industry spokesmen say these workers bring needed skills to our economy, on the H-1B Labor Condition Applications (LCAs) filed with the Department of Labor, employers classify most of their H-1B workers as being relatively low-skilled for the jobs they are filling.”

EXCERPT: “The argument is often made that immigrants have a stronger commitment to traditional family values than do native-born Americans. However, birth records show that about one-third of births to both groups are now to unmarried parents. Moreover, unmarried immigrants are significantly more likely than unmarried natives to give birth. Illegitimacy may be especially problematic for children of immigrants because they need strong families to adjust to life in America.”

Statement of Steven A. Camarota before the Subcommittee on Immigration, Citizenship, Refugees, Border Security, and International Law, Committee on the Judiciary, U.S. House of Representatives, May 9, 2007

EXCERPT: “As discussed above, the impact of immigration on the overall economy is almost certainly very small. Its short- and long-term impact demographically on the share of the population that is of working age is also very small. It probably makes more sense for policymakers to focus on the winners and losers from immigration. The big losers are natives working in low-skilled, low-wage jobs. Of course, technological change and increased trade also have reduced the labor market opportunities for low-wage workers in the Untied States. But immigration is different because it is a discretionary policy that can be altered. On the other hand, immigrants are the big winners, as are owners of capital and skilled workers, but their gains are tiny relative to their income.

“In the end, arguments for or against immigration are as much political and moral as they are economic. The latest research indicates that we can reduce immigration secure in the knowledge that it will not harm the economy. Doing so makes sense if we are very concerned about low-wage and less-skilled workers in the United States. On the other hand, if one places a high priority on helping unskilled workers in other countries, then allowing in a large number of such workers should continue. Of course, only an infinitesimal proportion of the world’s poor could ever come to this country even under the most open immigration policy one might imagine. Those who support the current high level of unskilled legal and illegal immigration should at least do so with an understanding that those American workers harmed by the policies they favor are already the poorest and most vulnerable.”

Statement of Vernon M. Briggs, Jr., Cornell University; Center for Immigration Studies Board Member before the Subcommittee on Immigration, Citizenship, Refugees, Border Security, and International Law, Committee on the Judiciary, U.S. House of Representatives, May 3, 2007

EXCERPT: “In its final report to Congress in 1997, the Commission on Immigration Reform defined what `a simple yardstick’ for `a credible immigration policy’ is: `people who should get in do get in, people who should not get in are kept out; and people who are judged deportable are required to leave.’

“The standard cannot be clearer. Congress and the Administration at that time did not listen and, sure enough, things have gotten far worse.

“It time to put aside the selfish pleas of special interest groups and to enact real immigration reform.

“Although some of my recommendations address issues not mentioned by CIR, all are consistent with those about which it did speak. All are intended to assure that our immigration policies are fair but firm and that they are congruent with the welfare of the nation’s most valuable resource: it labor force.”

Statement of Jessica M. Vaughan before the Subcommittee on Immigration, Citizenship, Refugees, Border Security, and International Law, Committee on the Judiciary, U.S. House of Representatives, April 26, 2007

EXCERPT: “If the program were to be made mandatory tomorrow, most businesses would be able to comply. Even most small businesses already use the Internet and can access the system. Companies who don’t want to do it themselves can pay their own accountant or lawyer or hire one of the many private-sector ‘designated agents’ to verify their workers.”

Statement of Mark Krikorian before the Subcommittee on Immigration, Citizenship, Refugees, Border Security, and International Law Committee on the Judiciary, U.S. House of Representatives, April 20, 2007

EXCERPT: “But there was one very large mistake made by Congress in the 1996 law, and that was rejecting the late Barbara Jordan’s recommendations to cut overall legal immigration. The U.S. Commission on Immigration Reform, headed by Jordan during most of its existence, spent years examining all aspects of the immigration issue and delivered reports on illegal immigration, legal immigration, refugees, and Americanization policy. .

“With regard to legal immigration, the Jordan Commission recommended a reduction of about one-third in total immigration, in particular focusing the family portion of the immigration flow more tightly and eliminating categories outside the nuclear family of husband, wife, and young children. Jordan’s recommendations would also have eliminated the small but unjustifiable unskilled worker category (the Commission noted that `Unless there is another compelling interest, such as in the entry of nuclear families and refugees, it is not in the national interest to admit unskilled workers’) and the egregious visa lottery.”

EXCERPT: “Leviticus 19 commands us to love the stranger. Bush’s cynical, reactionary bill, you can be certain, is not about love, and Leviticus 19 surely does not command us to exploit strangers as cheap labor or for political gain. Cherry-picking the Bible to support a shameful scheme to exploit poor immigrants at the expense of impoverished Americans to engorge the wealth of rich employers is a sacrilege. Why not just cite the Wall Street Journal?”

EXCERPT: “Only Muslims are more anti-Semitic than foreign-born Hispanics according to solid survey research. Latino anti-Semitism hovers in the upper 40th percentile. Latinos loathe us less, but they’ll have infinitely more power. If the Bush bill passes, Hispanics will soon control the American political system. Better to be hated by 2-3 million Muslims than strongly disliked by 100 million Latinos, a third of the population, who will outnumber us 50-1.”

EXCERPT: “The point is not that immigrants are worse than we are, any more than the open-borders crowd’s claims that immigrants are better than we are. Instead, they’re just like we are, subject to the same temptations of modernity, polluted by the same filth of popular culture, making the same bad choices with the freedom we can enjoy here.

“This may not be an argument for reducing immigration (there are plenty of those). But it certainly explodes any rational basis for arguing in favor of mass immigration based on a special immigrant commitment to traditional morality. There is no “family values gap,” and the sooner policymakers understand that, the sooner we’re likely to get an immigration policy consistent with our nation’s interests rather than one marinated in myths and nostalgia.”

EXCERPT: “The administration’s calculation that it can make amnesty and increased immigration palatable if only they are packaged with enough anti-immigrant measures is an insult to immigration hawks. Our response must be unequivocal: No Amnesty. No Guestworkers. Period.”

Background

The "line" of this blog is that immigration should be SELECTIVE. That means that:

1). A national government should be in control of it. The U.S. and U.K. governments are not but the Australian government has shown that the government of a prosperous Western country can be. Up until its loss of office in 2007, the conservative Howard government had all but eliminated illegal immigration. The present Leftist government has however restarted the flow of illegals by repealing many of the Howard government regulations.

2). Selectivity should be based on "the content of a man's character, not on the color of his skin", as MLK said. To expand that a little: Immigrants should only be accepted if they as individuals seem likely to make a positive net contribution to the country. Many "refugees" would fail that test: Muslims and Africans particularly. Educational level should usually be a pretty fair proxy for the individual's likely value to the receiving country. There will, of course, be exceptions but it is nonetheless unlikely that a person who has not successfully completed High School will make a net positive contribution to a modern Western society.

3). Immigrants should be neither barred NOR ACCEPTED solely because they are of some particular ethnic origin. Blacks are vastly more likely to be criminal than are whites or Chinese, for instance, but some whites and some Chinese are criminal. It is the criminality that should matter, not the race.

4). The above ideas are not particularly blue-sky. They roughly describe the policies of the country where I live -- Australia. I am critical of Australian policy only insofar as the "refugee" category for admission is concerned. All governments have tended to admit as refugees many undesirables. It seems to me that more should be required of them before refugees are admitted -- for instance a higher level of education or a business background.

5). Perhaps the most amusing assertion in the immigration debate is that high-income countries like the USA and Britain NEED illegal immigrants to do low-paid menial work. "Who will pick our crops?" (etc.) is the cry. How odd it is then that Australians get all the normal services of a modern economy WITHOUT illegal immigrants! Yes: You usually CAN buy a lettuce in Australia for a dollar or thereabouts. And Australia IS a major exporter of primary products.

6). I am a libertarian conservative so I reject the "open door" policy favoured by many libertarians and many Leftists. Both those groups tend to have a love of simplistic generalizations that fail to deal with the complexity of the real world. It seems to me that if a person has the right to say whom he/she will have living with him/her in his/her own house, so a nation has the right to admit to living among them only those individuals whom they choose.

I can be reached on jonjayray@hotmail.com -- or leave a comment on any post. Abusive comments will be deleted.